From Beginning to End
by chezchuckles
Summary: for docnerd89's prompt of the Coldplay song, 'Death and All of His Friends' - spoilers for Target/Hunt. "So come over, just be patient, and don't worry." 4 chapters COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1: So Come Over

**From Beginning to End**

* * *

for docnerd89

* * *

_So come over, just be patient, and don't worry._

_No I don't wanna battle from beginning to end;  
__I don't wanna cycle, recycle revenge;  
__I don't wanna follow death and all his friends. _

_In the end, we lie awake. . ._

_-Death and All of His Friends, Coldplay_

* * *

**_So Come Over_**

**_xxx_**

Rick Castle stands in front of the entirely-too-white murder board and taps one finger against the side of his thigh. He tilts his head as he reads the same information one more time. One more time.

Beckett has already brought the box and he sees her approach him, a serious and sympathetic look on her face. He might say pitying.

He gives it up, moves back to slump against the side of her desk, watches her studying him.

He waves it off as the boys make their way over.

The 12th is dark, the night outside touches soft fingers over the sharp corners. He takes in a breath of stale air and burnt coffee and shakes off the sensation.

"I've just never been with you guys on a case we haven't solved," he says. "Five years and now this."

It's a struggle to keep the petulance out of his voice, even though maybe his brand of arrogant, self-deprecating humor would be a welcome amusement.

Esposito tries though, gives levity a shot. "Yeah but for five years you've been cherry-picking, bro. Now that you're in the trenches, showing up for paperwork, you're going to get the duds too."

"Guys," Beckett chides, cutting her eyes between them. Ryan looks at her with that innocent face, even though he'd been nodding as well, and Esposito shrugs.

Castle watches her slowly take everything down from the whiteboard, the woman's ID photo first, and then each additional item, laying them carefully in the case box. Esposito, as if in restitution, hands her the dry eraser and takes the box from her hands.

But Kate turns to Castle and holds out the eraser. "Pop your cherry?"

The boys chuckle and he gives her a lift of his mouth for it, takes the eraser.

He has to pause a moment before he can start, and then he's wiping away all traces that the woman's murder ever happened.

**xxx**

As they're making their way towards the elevator, meandering really, his phone rings with that tone they've all come to recognize.

Ryan gives him an anxious look and Kate's fingers brush against his even as Castle reaches into his jacket pocket and takes out his phone.

"Hey, pumpkin," he answers. Esposito holds the elevator doors for him and he follows the team onto the lift, pushing his back against the smooth metal, all of them not even trying to pretend that they're not eavesdropping.

He talks to Alexis and agrees on a place for dinner, promises to come pick her up. Kate's blatantly rubbing her forefinger over his wrist bone and when he ends the call, the guys start first.

"How's she doing?"

He gives a lift of his shoulders. "Back at the dorm now."

They nod, careful and considerate and compassionate, all of them, and he appreciates their _less words the better_ mentality.

Before the elevator doors can open at his destination, Kate leans in close and breathes against his cheek, then kisses his jaw with a soft and subtle brush of her lips. Their fingers lace, his thumb finds the curved bowl of her palm and strokes in good-bye.

He gets off at the lobby and she rides down with the boys to the garage.

Castle shakes loose the unresolved swirl of the night air, the clouds that won't snow, and bundles his coat tighter around him as he goes to meet his daughter.

**xxx**

He calls before he even makes it home and she answers with a hum that means she's halfway to sleep.

He doesn't apologize, doesn't even greet her; he just forgets to. He picks up as if they've been having a conversation together all night, and even as he speaks, he realizes what he's doing.

But he won't stop. He _has _been having a conversation with her all night. It's just been in his head.

"I had to walk her back to the dorm," he says first.

"Yeah," she answers, a soft sigh of her breath. "It might be like that for a while yet."

He sighs out too, unlocks the door to his loft to be greeted with the close air of a heater that's been running too high with the place empty.

"It's hot in here."

"I told you to turn it down when we left," she murmurs.

"I forgot." Still he doesn't move to adjust the temperature.

"Your mother there?"

"Mm, no," he guesses. "Don't hear her. No wine out on the counter."

She breathes on the other end like she's right beside him, but she's not. He stands in his foyer with his coat still on and the keys in his hand and he realizes he doesn't want to be here.

"I don't want to be here," he says. The words come out of his mouth before the thought is even finished.

"So come over," she answers easily.

So he does.


	2. Chapter 2: Just Be Patient

**_Just Be Patient_**

**_xxx_**

They sit on her couch and sip the wine she poured even before he made it to her apartment. He took the half-empty glass from her fingers and took a healthy swallow and she came with him, followed his lead, sat close beside him with her knees drawn up and pressing into his thigh, and he appreciates that.

Because now he can set down a half-full glass on her coffee table.

Half-empty. Half-full.

He grins at her and stretches his legs out on her couch, burrowing under her until she huffs and falls into his side, holding her own wine glass up and out of the way. He gives her smoldering looks until she rolls her eyes and puts her glass on the coffee table as well, gives in to him.

When she's adjusted on the couch, lying in front of him with his arm around her waist and the other under her head, she turns on the television and they zone out with late night talk shows and the soft, rhythmic motion of her fingertips on his forearm.

**xxx**

He must have fallen asleep because he wakes the moment the television clicks off, startles on the remnants of a dream. She chuckles and taps his arm to let her go, loosen up, and he does, rubbing at his eyes.

"Come to bed," she murmurs, dragging her hand through his hair and then pushing on his forehead. "I'm getting a crick in my neck."

He struggles up after her and follows, shrugging his shoulders as he feels the pains in his own neck, the tightness in his back. He isn't paying attention as he walks and so he gets a faceful of her hair before he can stop himself; she pats his cheek and slips past him.

"Gotta put the wine up, glasses. Go ahead, get changed."

"What about you?" he mumbles.

"I've already got my pajamas on. I'll be right there."

The exchange has woken him up a bit more and he shuffles into her bedroom and mindlessly opens his drawer, draws his shirttails out of his pants, starts unbuttoning his cuffs. Kate comes back before he finishes, and he idly watches her putter around her room, putting things away, closing the lid to her wooden box, smoothing lotion into her hands.

She ties back her hair and slips into bed and he attends to himself again, pulls pajamas out of the drawer, folds things neatly because he likes the orderly touch of her room.

When he crawls into bed beside her, they lie in the darkness, awake and breathing, for a long time. That nap on the couch has given him just enough rest to make his body alert to every movement of hers.

And then she rolls onto her side and props her hand under her cheek and he turns his head to look at her.

"Did you tell Alexis I was in therapy?"

He blinks dumbly at her and wishes there was more light to gauge her reaction. "I - uh - might have said. . .there might have been a conversation about the strongest woman I know being in therapy?"

Her fingers uncurl in the bed between them, push across the sheet to touch the inside of his elbow. "Oh, yeah?"

"Is it bad that she guessed correctly?"

Kate gives a little laugh in the textured darkness, her finger strokes over skin. "Not bad. I don't mind."

"Wait, how did you know she knew?" he murmurs, trying to figure out when his daughter has even had the time to be away from him.

"We talked."

"When?"

"Yesterday. You left your phone at my desk to go bring up our lunch-"

"That delivery guy was clueless," he mutters, still not over it.

"She called, so I answered."

_Just in case_, he hears. "Thank you."

"Not needed," she says softly. "She asked for Dr Burke's name and number."

"Oh?" he gasps, turning on his side now and trying to make out her features in the hush and mute tones of night. "She really did? She was so against even the thought of it."

"She sounded apprehensive, and she didn't want any details. I offered. . ."

Oh, she offered. . .to share? Details? "Yeah?"

"She's finding her way, Rick."

He nods and the bed shakes with his motion; he realizes he's worked up again and flops onto his back, breathes it out.

She comes in and aligns her body with his, warm skin and soft cloth against his side, the brush of her hair under his chin.

"I hope she goes to therapy. Just to talk, you know?" he murmurs.

She gives a humming laugh, more noise than anything. "I know."

"Yeah, guess you do. She didn't want them to give her pills. She-"

"-wants to be a normal college kid," Kate finishes quietly. "I told her that was a misconception. If there _is_ a normal, then she can only find it faster if she has help."

He lets out a long breath, the kind that normally comes after a bout of crying, and he feels easier for it.

She twists her head on his shoulder and he feels her soft kiss. "Also? She told me, _I hear it's work. _Know where she might have gotten that from, Castle?"

"Could be you," he answers. "By way of me. I have the tendency to use you - sometimes verbatim - to solve my parenting issues. For going on five years. Until now, I've managed to claim all the awards for my successful child-rearing abilities, but the truth eventually comes out. Better now than later."

She actually laughs at that, and it makes him smile up at her ceiling, her hair ticklish at his chin, her body warming him.

"All the awards, huh?" she says, her fingers now spanning his ribs. "What awards are those?"

"Dad of the Year. Best Dad Ever. My coffee mugs say so."

"You also have a coffee mug that says, _I'm kind of a big deal_, but we all know that's patently untrue-"

She yelps when he pinches her side, her laughter falling off into the room, echoing around them. She's a little twitchy now - that'll teach her - and she keeps gripping his fingers to ward off another attack, but he just curls them up in her hand and brings that hand to his mouth, kisses her wrist.

"You denying I'm a big deal?" he says, pressing his smile to her skin.

She comes closer, back at his side again, and her fingers shake his loose to run through his hair. "Well, you're kind of a big deal to me," she admits. A little sigh, the soft and soothing comb of her fingers.

"Ditto, Beckett."

He closes his eyes and she stops moving, her hand draped at his neck, their bodies warming the bed, and yet his brain won't turn off.

He wonders if Alexis has actually called Dr Burke yet. Or any therapist. Maybe she was only humoring him. She needs to call. She has to call.

"We've had dinner together every night this week," he starts. "She's got to see someone. She's got to _talk_ about it."

Kate presses her fingers into his spine, the bones at his neck. "Castle. Just be patient. You used to be good at it."

He huffs but he sees her point.


	3. Chapter 3: And Don't Worry

_**And Don't Worry**_

**xxx**

He hears the clang of the chain link closing and lifts his head from the box. Archives is cramped and narrow, the rows stuffed with what looks to be a basement collection of Americana, and even though it's well-kept and the lights are always on, it has the creeping sensation of a catacombs.

Where cases go to die.

Castle hears her footsteps on the concrete; the click of her heels is measured and certain (she knows exactly where he is). And then she appears at the end of the row and advances towards him.

He's hunched over the work desk, and of course, she could have looked at the sign-in sheet to see what case he requested, but she knew before she came down here. Didn't she? She did.

She doesn't say anything, just takes the lid out of his hands and closes it over the box, settles it firmly in place, and then she puts the box on the cart labeled _In Transit_. He knows from experience that Raymond will push the cart forlornly down the aisles and back to the correct row and shelf, and then he will put the box back where it belongs.

Raymond does a good job keeping things in their place, takes pride in always knowing where things are. Castle's not allowed to touch it himself.

Kate presses her hand to his shoulder and it makes him sit up straighter, makes him take in a deep breath for the first time all afternoon. She quirks her eyebrow as it to say, _Now isn't that better?_ and it really is.

"I know it's the first case together we didn't solve," she says quietly, nudging him to stand. "And I know you like to attach meaning to things."

_But._

He shambles down the aisle after her, Kate so certain he'll follow that he actually does follow. When he catches up to her at the chain link fence that separates the cold cases from the desk, she takes him by the hip and pushes him through ahead of her.

For a moment, she's on one side and he's on the other.

"But, Castle, it doesn't mean anything." She takes that last step and joins him on the cleaner side, the brighter side. Raymond is already hovering close and asking him to sign out of the Archives register.

He does what he's supposed to, thanks Raymond for the help, moves towards the stairs that lead back up to Homicide. It's been a day of cold calls and paper chasing, and he's felt - alternately - useless and helpful, depending, but he wanted one more crack at it.

"Okay, so it does mean something," she says suddenly.

He falters on the step, but she's right behind him and brushing past, making him keep up.

"It means you officially spend too much time at my job," she adds, a little smirk on her mouth. "It means that instead of calling you for the interesting cases-"

"The _fun_ cases."

"-I call you for all of them."

He smirks back, liking this meaning a lot more than the one he was unofficially assigning it: The Case They Couldn't Solve, aka, The Ruination Of All Things.

"And maybe I should let you sleep in," she adds.

He opens his mouth to protest this - being _ditched_, but she keeps going.

"Since your powers of deduction seem to have. . .shrunk. Am I wearing you out, Writer Boy?"

He gapes at her standing just above him on the stairs, nearly a whole flight up from him now, and it must be the look on his face that does it because she breaks, starts laughing to herself with a kind of helpless and breathless giggle that she absolutely _never_ lets out at the 12th.

And he likes it.

"I am not worn out," he grumbles, and then he mounts the stairs to chase after her.

**xxx**

"You haven't seemed to notice," she murmurs in his ear.

He startles so hard that she chuckles and slips her hands down his shoulders to explore - oh, _nice_ - and his hips lift in the desk chair as he automatically saves his work. He pushes the laptop away and turns his head, manages to catch the curve of her jaw with his teeth before she steps back.

Sigh.

"Notice?" he asks, because she's been doing paperwork at her coffee table all night and he brought his laptop with him to her apartment for that very reason.

So it's not like she's slipped on some naughty piece of lace and has been trying - in vain - to tease him from his thoughts of Nikki.

In fact, he hasn't been doing much writing at all.

"You didn't notice my not so subtle comment in Archives."

"Well, I guess it _was_ subtle, Beckett. And why are you standing all the way over there? Get back here, woman."

She raises an eyebrow and instead crooks her finger at him, and God help him, he jumps right to his feet and follows.

She leads him to the kitchen though, which is one way to satisfy the hard fist of hunger in his guts, but not the way he expected. She's already got ingredients pulled out for pasta and chicken and sauce, a bag of frozen vegetables melting on the counter, and she nods towards it.

"Dinner?"

He huffs a little and starts preparing dinner (he honestly lost track of the time and he meant to make her something while she was working), and she settles her hips against the counter and watches him turn on the stove, find a pan.

"So you were too subtle for me. About what?" he prompts.

"I said I should stop calling you for everything."

He lifts an eyebrow in question and she does the same, and he really doesn't understand what her _ditching_ him for what could potentially turn out to be a _great_ case (how does she _know_ it won't be any fun? how can she possibly make that decision unilaterally?) has anything to do-

"Oh. Wow. I think I actually get it."

She just stays all serene and unperturbed, her arms coming to cross over her chest, settled so naturally against the counter while he does all the work of preparing dinner.

"I have this internal monologue going," he informs her.

"I figured as much."

He glares, dumps chicken breast into the pan with the oil and garlic. "Anyway, I have this monologue going. It helps me censor my mouth-"

"-hardly-"

Completely ignoring that. "And so I was just thinking, in my dramatic monologue, that it's totally wrong of you to decide for me which cases are fun. Unilaterally. Without even giving me a chance."

"Oh, look at that. You _do _get it."

"Jeez, you are snarky today."

"I've been holding it in for a while now. It's built up."

"Have some wine," he suggests cheekily. But she does though, moving now to get the bottle they opened yesterday from the fridge and pouring two glasses.

"So what was your dramatic conclusion?" she murmurs. "Over deciding when to call and when not to call."

"I _get_ it," he grouses, taking a swallow of wine as he browns the chicken. "The horse is dead. I get it. I promise. No deciding _for _you. I'll call you next time."

"There will never be a next time," she says in a rush.

He turns to her in surprise and all the snark and amusement have dropped right off her face. It's just that shining, tremulous thing, that needy thing, that never really looks right on her.

He wants to assure her that Alexis is safe, that there will never be any need for dangerous and reckless actions on his part. But they can't make that promise to each other.

"Castle."

"I'll call you next time," he says instead.

She doesn't look happy with that.

"Kate. You wouldn't forgive me either," he sighs. "Impossible promises to make."

Her fingers are suddenly hard around his wrist, pausing him in the act of adding sauce to the chicken. She looks so fierce, so insistent and demanding.

"You don't know what I've already forgiven," she says.

**xxx**

Their empty plates are on the coffee table and he's sitting at one end of the couch while she's in the middle, turned so that her legs are up and tangled around him like a venus fly trap. He thinks there's a toe pressed into his ribs.

He strokes his palm up and down her calf and sighs. "I'm working on it," he says finally.

"And she is too," Kate adds, confirming.

He nods. "I think she saw Burke yesterday. She didn't tell me about it though."

"You're going to have to let her. . .go," she says. Softly. Her snark comes up every now and again, that delicious and crisp cut to her voice that makes him want to kiss her hard, but the softness is - better sometimes. Better for him. And she knows it, because she's being soft with him.

"Sage advice," he mutters. Sometimes he wants to blurt out, _Easy for you to say_. But then he thinks better of it and remembers, _You don't know what I've already forgiven._

The implication being - forgiven _him_. For things. Many things. He's made her all those promises too, hasn't he?

"I meant it though," he blurts out, gripping her calf in his hand. "When I told you we'd get your mother's murderer - when I said we'd do this, Kate - I meant those promises. I intended to keep them-"

"And I didn't intend to keep mine?" she cries back, pulling her legs out of his hands.

"No, that's not - I meant, when we do it together, when we solve cases together, we're undefeatable. But then this last case, after what happened with Alexis. . .I guess that's why I can't let go of it. It nullifies my promises to you, makes them. . .false."

"You think I haven't known that all along?" she says quietly. "That life sucks and things aren't fair and sometimes it doesn't go our way? My mother's case, Castle. My mother's case and you made promises left and right, and I needed them. I needed you to be right."

"I'm sorry," he mutters. He can't get it right with her. He just keeps poking his nose in it.

"No. No, I don't think you're hearing me. It's not an accusation. I needed you to make those promises. I needed someone to believe in me, to believe that good things were possible again, that the world wasn't shrouded in darkness. Magic. It _helped_ me. And so when she was missing, Castle, I just wanted to help you."

He opens his eyes and stares at her.

"I didn't do a damn thing to help you," she says, her throat working and her head turned away.

He curls his fingers at her ankles and pulls her legs back into his lap, tugs until she comes into his side.

"I see now," he murmurs. "I should have called you." He should've let her help. Even if it was to be silent with him on the phone.

She lets out a choked kind of laugh and her arms cross her stomach, wrapping around her. "If that's your only take away. . .I guess I'm good with that."

"I'll keep making you promises," he says then. He's made one lately, that he keeps making silently every time he sees her.

_I love you._

Maybe she still needs to hear that promise too.

He takes a deeper breath and draws his arm around her and opens his mouth-

"And Castle? Don't worry," she adds, a little shrug. "You can't let it haunt you, drag you down. All the ways you can't be there for her. Because the things you can do are so much _more_. They outweigh the what ifs."

His moment is lost now, isn't it?

He brushes his mouth to her temple, promising himself that he'll say it again. He will. He'll say it first so that she knows it's still a promise, that it still holds true no matter what he says or does.

"How exactly do you _not_ worry about your college daughter who was recently kidnapped due to her relation to a previously unknown spy grandfather?"

She must hear the attempt at lightness in her tone because she responds in kind. "Just do what I do."

"Yeah, doing you helps," he admits.

She huffs a little and her fingers squeeze at his hipbone. "Far be it from me to begrudge you your inappropriate coping mechanisms, but I was _going_ to say a glass of wine, a bath, a book."

"I'm trying to avoid alcohol as a coping mechanism," he admits.

She lifts her head and looks at him closely. "Because of me?"

"Because of a lot of things," he shrugs.

"Then, by all means, Castle, continue to be inappropriate," she murmurs. Her lips lift to his jaw and touch him so softly, such a whisper of breath and skin and warmth that his body flames. "Since it helps."

He nudges his nose against her neck and down, drawn by the heat of her. "I'm a master of inappropriate."

"Promises, promises," she hums.


	4. Chapter 4: In the End, We Lie Awake

**_In the end, we lie awake_**

**_xxx_**

"I like it with the lights on," he laughs.

She flops her hand out to smack him in the chest, and he laughs again and captures her by the wrist, holds her there. He finds himself drawing letters on her palm, aimless at first, and then spelling love into her skin, the two of them side by side on their backs in her bed. If she reads him, she doesn't let him know.

"This is one instance in which I really would love a clapper," she murmurs.

"Clap on, clap off?"

"Exactly." She gives a little sigh and he studies the ceiling, the warm golden glow in the room as her lamps infuse the space with light. "I'm not moving," she mutters.

"Give me a second; I'll get them when I can move."

She hums now in pleasure and curls on her side towards him, still sweaty and trying to cool off, but looking at him. He releases her hand so she can have it back, and she switches instead.

Her other palm flattens out at his chest, fingers flex and lay down, and surely she can feel the ragged bump and thunder of his heart.

He closes his eyes, memory still fresh with the feel of her above him, her hair in the light and her skin, the rise of her body, the way it meets his, the unbearable force of his love.

He still has promises to keep.

Castle rolls over now too, blinks past the rustle of the sheet beneath him, the slope of the pillow in his view. She opens her eyes and he sees the naked edge of sleep and how it makes her regard him like a lost treasure.

"Come here," she murmurs, drawing him in.

Castle meets her offering with his mouth, a slowed down kiss, warm and mumbling as she says something he misses. He presses into her, arms enfolding the slim angle of her waist and her shoulders, a leg slipping between hers.

He keeps his promises to her.

"Kate," he sighs, lowers his mouth to taste the skin at the hollow of her neck, the scar. "Kate, I love you."

Her leg wraps around his waist and her fingers skim in his hair and she's pulling his head up to kiss him, she's kissing him, she's close and rich and vibrant, and she's permeable enough to give it right back to him, everything he needs, all the help in the world.

"I know," she breathes into him. "I know."


End file.
